The
Syria-based deputy patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Bishop Luka
Khoury, said Thursday that there was no danger of a partition of Syria, or
threats to Syria’s Christian community, despite the ongoing unrest in the
country. “There are many rumors; there is no civil war in Syria until now. No
one has attacked us so far and there is no danger to Christians,” the bishop
said.
Unfortunately,
it is civil war and sectarian clashes in Syria and the whole region that
certain politicians in the allegedly historical Christian countries, like the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America,
and France, seem to be after.
More than
that! According to some US and British diplomats, the most obvious scenario in
Syria would be “an all-out war” and “a proxy conflict with arms flowing in from
all sides.”
If you
doubt that the above mentioned countries, as well as some others, are actively
pushing Syria toward a localized Armageddon that would most certainly engulf
the whole region in an armed conflict of epic proportions, you should look into
the most recent activity by those states as well as such “friends” of Syria,
albeit of varying notoriety, as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, Libya,
and Russia.
All those
countries are actively supplying weapons and military equipment to either the
Syrian government or to the warring multinational terrorist groups there, the
latter for convenience sake slyly dubbed “opposition forces” or “rebels”. The US State Department insists that the
United States is not paying for or supplying any weapons to the conflict, but
admitted to The Washington Post that it is providing "non-lethal
assistance" to the “opposition forces”, in the form of information sharing
and coordination between the “rebels” and other nations in the region. More and
better weaponry is being funneled to Syrian “rebels” by neighboring Persian Gulf
states, and much of the support effort is being organized by U.S. officials.
Most recent
videos out of Syria appear to show the terrorists fighters carrying and using
much more sophisticated and up-to-date weapons than at the beginning of the
conflict and their US–coordinated attacks on Syrian government troops are
growing more aggressive and deadlier.
It is a
common knowledge that Syria is one of Russia's top weapons customers. Russia has
been providing Syria with modern weapon systems incessantly under various
contracts, which had been concluded long time ago, fully in line with
international law. Officially they do not contribute to the current armed
violence in Syria. So far.
In a letter
to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he
had seen reports of countries supplying arms to the government and “rebels”. He
even urged states not to arm either side in the Syrian conflict.
The
situation around Syria has turned into regional arms race frenzy on behalf of
the conflicting sides, each side trying to out-supply the other in apparent
preparation for a fierce and lengthy armed conflict. The amount of the most
sophisticated weapons in Syria, as well as in the entire region, must be
staggering. If a fully blown war starts there it will remind us of the Cold War
era of similar proxy wars that had been waged intermittently across the globe
but on a smaller individual scale. It has been 14 months since the conflict
started in Syria and the situation has been growing decidedly worse.
Now, almost
a year since the conflict entered its deadly military stage, all sides involved
seem to have agreed to let all systems go. Syrian government, the only party
not interested in seeing all this regional weaponry come to all-out use, has issued
the results of the preliminary investigation which showed that last week several
anti-government armed groups (totaling 600 – 800 armed men) carried out a coordinated
attack on security posts in Houla region and a simultaneous death raid which
ended with a massacre of 108 civilians, among them children, from local villages.
Most of the victims died in their homes and entire families were summarily
executed by gunmen at close range. According to the report, most of the victims
were family members of those "who refused to oppose the government and
were at odds with the armed groups". Some of the victims were relatives of
a member of parliament.
We might
never come to know exactly who those terrorists who had carried out such a pointedly
provocative and showy act of barbarism were. The Western governments
unashamedly used that deadly provocation in their interests and prematurely accused
the Syrian government. The position of the accusers is clear. They are waiting
for such provocations, to say the least. They never concealed their desire to
get rid of the Syrian government and expressed clearly their readiness to reach
their end by all means. As we all know, from their point of view, the end
justifies the means.
But
toppling the Syrian lawful government is not really the sole objective of this
campaign. Needless to say that the ultimate aim of political economists from
the West is to create certain economic conditions favorable to the leading corporate
banking houses in Europe and America to do their murky businesses on new
territories where bank loans would be forced on local economies so that later
they could be privatized for debts. Destabilizing local political situation in
one country is a precondition necessary for destabilizing the situation in the
whole region. The main objective here is to render the whole Middle-Eastern region
a political hell on the one side and on the other an economic heaven regarding
the opportunities it presents to certain banks and corporations in terms of
loans and investments into newly politically disorganized and devastated
economies. Do you remember what happened to Europe after the WWI and WWII? Who
benefitted the most from the chaos in the aftermath of all the revolutions and
wars? What about more recent precedents? Is the turn of the Middle East to
follow that kind of path, now?
Not
exactly! After all, geopolitical situation in general is rather different now. There
is no more Soviet Russia and no stifling global ideological, military, and
economic standoff any more. It is free for all, now! And what is most exciting
is that Russia, tri-color as she is, plays, or at least is learning fast to,
the good old game just like everybody else! Wow!
The siege
of the Syrian state is tightening, though. The US Treasury Department said
Wednesday that the Syria International Islamic Bank, or SIIB, has been acting
as a front for other Syrian financial institutions seeking to circumvent sanctions.
The new penalties will prohibit the bank from engaging in financial
transactions in the U.S. and will freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.
SIIB said
it would undertake all necessary measures toward the U.S. decision, saying it
has no assets or accounts in the United States. It added that the bank, like
other Syrian banks, halted all banking operations with the dollar since U.S.
sanctions were first imposed on Syria. Well, it means that most likely the
future of Syria is settled. In a negative way, though.
So, while
Syria is being turned, by means of financial and economic sanctions, as well as
overall military preparations, into a fortified castle besieged from all sides,
the true masters of the game keep on going preparing the whole of the region
for action. There is evidence that the
unrest has already spilled over several times into neighboring Lebanon. In the
latest incident, gunmen kidnapped two Lebanese farmers in the country's north
and took them across the border into Syria on Wednesday, a Lebanese security
source said. United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has assured
all parties concerned that “the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and
intensifies”. “It involves countries in the region, it takes on increasingly
sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the
region,” she said. So, it goes as planned, apparently.
Iran,
meanwhile, has recently blamed Israel for the violence in Syria, saying
Jerusalem is deliberately sabotaging the UN peace plan. Speaking at a weekly
press conference, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast stated:
“Any crime committed (in Syria) can be traced back to the (Israeli) regime’s
hirelings”.
The U.S. and Russia, while accusing each other of pushing Syria towards
a fully blown military conflict, keep arming the opposing sides in Syria. According
to specialists, though, in contrast to Libya where NATO forces helped “rebels”
topple Muammar Gaddafi last year, Syria's sectarian divisions, splintered
opposition, stronger air defenses and armed forces all factor against armed
intervention. Does it mean that the military conflict can be avoided? Probably
not, unless the leaders in the United States, Great Britain, and France change
their minds and learn to respect other peoples’ rights to national sovereignty and
unless they stop their willful interventionist policies against other independent,
albeit smaller, nations. But the logic of the Economic Shock Doctrine dictates the opposite and the greedy immoral decadent but still powerful transnational financial-banking-oligarchic-corporate circles are not going to stop. They use every means possible to crush, to lie, to steal, and usurp… They kill people to live off their blood and suffering! The amount of weapons already amassed in the region indicates that the military conflict could be very long and devastating. Is it really to get that far worse, before it gets any better for the Middle East? Unfortunately, British and American politicians already predict terrible times of incessant “sectarian violence” for the whole of the Middle East in the near future.